Ingeborg Barth Vedøy defended her thesis on 1 December. She works at the Section for Public Health at Elverum campus and in recent years has set out to explore the relationship between physical activity and mental health – and between physical activity and academic achievement.
Her project has been part of the research project “Schools, learning, physical activity and mental health” which started in 2015.
With 1.8 million of grant funding from the Research Council of Norway, the project was completed just before Christmas.
“We still plan to continue the work as part of INN University's “Critical Public Health Research Group” and publish papers based on data we have already collected through this project,” says Miranda Thurston, who has led the work in the research project.
Ingeborg's thesis was the last of three PhDs, in addition to several papers that have come out of the project.
- Read more about Ingeborg Barth Vedøy’s thesis
- Read more about Linda Røset’s thesis
- Read more about Ellen Nesset Mælan’s thesis
Mental health in schools
The project "Schools, learning, physical activity and mental health" has been carried out in collaboration with The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, The National Centre for Food, Health and Physical Activity, The University of Bergen and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, in addition to The University of Chester and Loughborough University in England.
The focus is on youth in 8th to 10th grade (12-16 years) in a sample of middle schools in Norway and the questions that were asked in the project were: How are specific aspects of schooling related to mental health, and what are the consequences for the children's academic achievements?
Schools can have a considerable impact not only on children and youth's opportunities for education, but also on their mental health.
And not least – the teenage years are a particularly important period in their development. They mark the transition from youth to young adulthood and are a time where young people are shaped in many different ways by many different factors.
No correlation
All three PhD candidates in the project have explored key topics such as mental health and welfare in relation to school, learning and academic achievement, and physical activity and physical education.
Ingeborg Barth Vedøy defended her thesis at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. She delved deeper into the actual relationship between physical activity and mental health – and between physical activity and academic achievement. She followed 599 middle school students from 11 schools in Eastern and Western Norway over three whole years, from 2016 to 2018. The youth ranged from 12 to 16 years old.
She examined these connections over time and has established that the emerging picture is very complex.
“This is not entirely unambiguous, but one can at least state that there is no clear correlation between the amount or intensity of physical activity and mental problems, as several previous studies have shown. Nor the opposite – between a lot of sitting still and mental problems,” she says and adds, “At least this is the conclusion in healthy groups.”
However, there seems to be a positive correlation between sedentary time and mental well-being in boys, as well as between physical activity and mental well-being in girls.
These results support the possibility that physical activity may have varying significance for different indicators of mental health, and that the amount and intensity of physical activity does not seem to have a significant effect on mental health or mental health problems and academic achievement in otherwise healthy adolescents.
- Read the report on Ingeborg's research on The homepage of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences
Developing competence for the future
Possessing good mental health, as well as achieving well at school is an essential premise for young people’s future.
The school is an important arena in the lives of children and youth and an important goal for the project has been to transfer findings to politics and the field of practice in an effective way.
“The knowledge from this project can be an important contribution for both politicians and professionals,” says project leader Miranda Thurston.
But there is more that is positive about the project.
“Perhaps the most important thing about this project has been that the competence we have developed in collaboration with our partners has laid the foundation for future projects and publications. In this sense, the project is not over. It will continue” says Thurston.
Contact:
Miranda Thurston, project leader
Email: miranda.thurston@inn.no
Phone: 62 43 02 76 / +44 755 796 7046
Ingeborg Barth Vedøy, PhD fellow
Email: ingeborg.vedoy@inn.no
Mobile: 91 53 49 51 / 62 43 03 45
This article was translated from Norwegian by Noorit Larsen.